I made my third and fourth visits to OccupyDenver last week, including Saturday’s conservative counter-demonstration. While my visit last Thursday was on an unseasonably warm afternoon, Saturday was bitterly cold after a night of heavy snow fall. The weather was so miserable that the organizers of the conservative demonstration cancelled it.

Still a rump group of conservatives gathered on the capital steps to listen to informal addresses. There were about thirty conservatives, twenty state troopers, and a smattering of press and OccupyDenver activists. Apparently a Democratic Hickenlooper administration focused on costs believes it needs twenty state troopers to guard the capital from thirty conservatives.

It was a respectful gathering that listened to traditional themes of personal responsibility, free market economics, and private charity. The organizers also invited several OccupyDenver activists to speak and cheered a variety of common themes – love of country and criticism of crony capitalism generated the most enthusiasm. And there was respectful disagreement as well.

On the conservative side I was particularly impressed with a young conservative radio personality, Jimmy Segenberger. Segenberger offered a critique of student loan debt that both agreed with the OccupyWallStreet movement that a college tuition bubble existed, but differed in seeing federal subsidized student loans as the problem. Segenberger expressed a belief that the constant increase in federally subsidized student loan availability was driving an increasing demand for college that drove costs skyward. Segenberger focused on the importance of not forgiving loans, personal responsibility, and using his own example of finishing college early in three years as a solution to college debt. It was eloquent, it was rational, and it may have some legitimacy. Read More

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